sound and fury (signifying nothing)

I actually guffawed when I saw this on my statistics page:

Hooray for random perversion in triplicate. I think I needed that.

I want to thank you. Who, whoever you are.

I had a bit of my faith in humanity restored today. After spending time in the unabashedly whitest county in the United States, it was nice to go to Charleston High and see a display about integration bearing the sentiment that we are all God’s children, and we are all equal in his eyes.

(That statistic about Boone almost sounds like a bad joke, but even if Wikipedia’s wrong, it’s not hard to see the visible physical deformities caused by such fear of miscegenation.)

Of course, given the absolute misery of the drive between that area of the country and the relatively civilized part of it wherein I live, it’s not hard to see why they’d rather just stay up there and inbreed. Not that I’m feeling particularly charitable towards racists. The opposite, actually, having just watched American History X.

Odd, that. I turned off the movie about ten minutes before the ending, because I knew it would upset me. Flipping through the channels, I noticed that SVU was on, and I got upset anyway.

If you sit and think about something long enough (something I have, on occasion, been known to do), everything is traceable back to a clearly definable origin. To put it in pithier terms, everything happens for a reason. Every quirk in our appearances or personalities comes back to a minute yet specific chemical change, or an event that’s gone instantly yet leaves an indelible etching.

I suppose I’m shaky because I’m angry. I’ve made a realization about myself, and when I’m this enraged, I tremble like the last autumn leaf.

I have pretty shitty self-esteem. This isn’t anything new, however, I’ve never really thought about why that might be. I had, well, technically three parents. One of them sucked hardcore, but wasn’t really involved in my life in any meaningful way aside from the genetic contribution. One of them had his definite lousy tendencies and habituations, but was, when sober, a pretty decent dad. And one of them, while not short of faults, was actually a pretty fantastic mother. I’ve no doubt disappointed them all with my various acts of stupidfuckery. I seem to have some sort of fear of success thing going on, too, probably because I don’t believe in myself.

I don’t think this is directly the fault of Mom or Dad. The fault lies in a direction that I try actively not to think about. It’s one of the very few things that I refuse to discuss with myself. It’s one of the few things about me that not a living soul knows.

It’s not, however, something I want to go into great detail here. I don’t know who I would talk about it with. Maybe a good therapist with weird hours.

That there are scant few people I would trust with it isn’t even my main motivation for keeping it inside. It’s not a secret that I keep by necessity. I keep it for sanity. And I’ve not told anyone in so long, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It’s like a deep-seated infection. You can’t just go to the core of it and yank it out; you have to debride all the tissue that’s been festering for eighteen years.

That, and I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. I don’t want people to judge me, even though I know they wouldn’t be as merciless as I have been to myself. I refuse to be a victim. In some ways, I probably overcompensate. I go above and beyond because I don’t want to be devalued like that again. I don’t want to be taken advantage of again. Ruined any more.

I just seek enlightenment. I want to understand things, why they are the way they are, the rationale. I assume that most people are like that. And when I cut myself down, I don’t want people to compliment me and tell me how wonderful I am. I want them to understand that I can’t see myself any other way because of the infection I have. No, the infection I was given.

As much as I like the Meloni & Mariska Fun Hour, I’m going to have to abstain. It stops being funny when it starts being you.

Music: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – Friends

(I didn’t mean the saddest song in my queue to be playing right now, but I guess things happen that way.)

Only twice have I imbibed so much that it caused a violent, toilet-hugging reaction. Two of my favorite foods (spinach and mushrooms) have made prominent appearances. And yet, I continue to enjoy the former on a regular basis, and will surely have no problem scarfing down the latter at whatever distant point in time I can eat things without getting nauseated.

That’s only worth mentioning because I cannot stand the idea of hot dogs or cheese-colored-product-on-cheese-colored crackers, because I have seen them thrown up by donors.

Anyway, I remember two things from last night. One is that I felt good, better than I have in years, the kind of good I used to feel when my car ran reliably and I could drive long distances to wherever I had the whim to be. I fell asleep feeling awesome.

Later, after my digestive system made it clear that it was preparing not to tolerate my crap anymore, I also remember considering lying down and sleeping on the bathroom floor.

I eventually made it back to bed, and I’m not proud of much in my life, but I am proud that I did that. It’s a Pyrrhic victory, to be sure, but after reflecting on it, I came to the conclusion that I am a grown-ass woman, not an 18-year-old sorority pledge. I need to work on getting myself a little dignity.

Which is why I gave John the remaining 3/4 of the liter of Wild Turkey that I’d originally bought for the New Year’s party. I imagine his liver’s a bit more callused than mine.

Music: U2 – One

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I’m not skipping the therapy today, as I’d originally thought I might. Just pointing it in another direction. Professionals might say that’s slightly intellectually dishonest, to which I’d reply, “You would cost me $150 an hour, and blogging is free, so I suppose whatever cake I damn please.”

Besides, rehashing my miserable day would be like a Little League coach repeatedly showing his players a tape of all their errors. It’s mean, maybe cruel or abusive. And I definitely could stand to be a little nicer to myself.

(Of course, I can’t ever do things with subtlety and grace, so my biggest fear is becoming a total self-absorbed jackass with an attitude problem. Like, in real life, not just here.)

I have to wonder if the homesickness that lives in me, swelling and rolling like waves of nausea, is truly a result of missing Greenville; or if it’s not actually a contrasting version of the case of anywhere-but-here syndrome I developed in the middle of 2006.

Now I’m reading The Grapes of Wrath, and in the part where the Joad family is leaving Oklahoma, it talks about US 64 and the places it passes through, including Van Buren and Fort Smith. It catches my eye because I live there, and was in fact driving on 64 from Alma to Rogers Ave. for no reason at all. “Huh. I’ve been there,” and that’s all.

I have a hard time imagining I would ever feel any sort of heartache if this happened to me after I had already left this place. Unless a life-changing event happens between this very moment and the time I’d like to leave two years hence, I doubt I’d ever be watching MSNBC news coverage about Arkansas politics, and start to cry.

What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here. Maybe it would be different if I weren’t so closed and hard to like. Maybe it would be different if I didn’t hate myself so much that, as soon as I realize that I’m laying myself bare, I think this person doesn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut what I think or feel and snap my mouth shut.

Sometimes, today of all times, all I want is someone who will listen to me, unreservedly, without passing judgment, or offering easier-said-than-done solutions (“go back to school” is starting to poke its ugly head out again recently, I’ve noted), or trying to one-up whatever sob story I’m trying to unload; someone who won’t say “it’s going to be okay” or hug me, because that, somehow, makes it worse.

I guess I just want to share the misery.

And yet, I convince myself that pouring all my shit out onto someone’s hapless shoulders is not at all considerate. Even when they’ve told me that they don’t mind. Even when they’ve asked about it. There’s a dichotomy I could spend hours not figuring out.

The drug’s most definitely working. In all the worst ways. I understand the rationale behind it, but with the side effects, you’re just as miserable as you’d be going cold-turkey.

That’s about right. I’ve never broken anything, and I’ve always wanted crutches.

Music: Ozzy Osbourne – The Wizard

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It’s a little after seven in the morning, and it’s my day off, so I should be asleep. But Snorey McBuzzSaw has made that sort of an impossibility, so here I am, trying not to remember my dreams, waiting for the time to be right to call about that place in Van Buren, and flipping through the Ikea catalog in search of queen-sized beds.

I was going to opine that it was a small wonder someone on The Daily Buzz would rant about the ACLU. I could’ve sworn I’d seen it on Fox back in Market 36, but apparently it’s always been on this WB/UPN bastardization known as CW. So I guess that guy’s just a freedom-hating douchebag. The Daily Douchebag, I like it.

Music: Whiskeytown – Black Arrow, Bleeding Heart

I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up twenty minutes ago; I was so bored, I was intentionally chugging water because I can’t sleep if I have to go. Then I get home and have a catbox to clean out (ammonia does wonders for your state of consciousness); a package to open up that I fear may be the work of a third TFSS (not that I don’t appreciate it, or even that it actually is a TFSS gift, but who else would send me random books? And how is it fair that I get three gifts when so many people got none?); and an interesting yet silly imbalance to ponder.

The meeting was like our standard departmental meetings to the nth degree; instead of just collections staff, this one included everyone working in the Fort Smith center. A little bit of hey, way to go and a whole lot of hey, quit this shit. A little bit of public love feast, too, which, along with sandwiches from Quizno’s, made the whole thing lean towards bearable.

I wanted to stand up and say that communication and cooperation (which, according to the results of last year’s employee satisfaction survey, were pretty big concerns) would go a whole lot smoother if everyone tried on a little bit of conscientiousness, “doing unto others”, and being maybe 3-5% nicer to one another. I didn’t, at first because I thought it would make me sound stupid and like a kindergarten teacher (although, to be fair, some people really just need a goddam lesson in the basics of human decency). I then realized that pretty much anyone there who dealt with me or my work in any way probably already thought I was stupid, but it’s a moot point anyway, because it would have done no good.

I think I’m a pretty thoughtful person. I know I could do better if I tried, but I don’t know if I’d be able to stand the way I’d feel. It is incredibly fucking draining when no one notices what you’re doing for them, or appreciates it. I do have at least one person who does, and lets me know, so I won’t be going down the road or across the street anytime soon.

I suspect that the reason I’ve been in a funk the last couple of weeks is because I’ve not worked with this person once, and spent a whole lot of time working with someone who chides me like a five-year-old over insignificant shit.

---

I saw Juno yesterday, and it was completely full of win. The title character reminded me a lot of myself when I was in high school, if I’d spent more time being who I wanted to be and doing what I wanted to do and not worrying about what people thought of me or harboring pointless crushes.

It was a little bittersweet, actually. And I’ve discovered that I cannot watch a movie with a childbirth scene without getting upset. Probably a combination of my feelings about the nephew I never got to meet, and about my own body’s having proven to me that it wants no part of this reproduction thing.

Speaking of high school: we had a little in-joke in French II about Mrs. Gallagher working at Platinum Plus (which I always thought sounded like a strip club that employed only bottle-blonde fat chicks). So imagine my amusement to be in possession of a Bank of America credit card that says “Platinum Plus.”

Further imagine my amusement to be holding a Bank of America credit card at all, when I settled with a collection agency for the ~$500 I owed them in December and agreed that they would never open an account with me again. Corporate incompetence at its finest.

---

I’ve Pavloved the cat with my keyboard cleaner. When she’d jump up on my desk and start acting retarded, I’d shoot a bit of compressed air at her to get her to knock it off. Now I don’t even have to depress the trigger; soon as I pick up the can, she’s off like a shot.

Apparently, this stuff contains a bittering agent to prevent inhalant abuse. I could go melodramatic and say “As does everything else in my life” or I could be whimsical and say “They oughta put a warning on the can about that.”

More like, out of the mouths of the stuporous….

I never really say anything truly insightful, especially not when under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, but I just had something float into my brain. I’m not on anything now, but it well relates to what’s currently on my mind.

I sometimes wonder why I do this writing thing, and why I persist when I’m obviously not very good at it. My primary reason is that it’s cathartic – being able to write about the mundane bullshit that pisses me off makes me understand why people have friends. It makes you feel like someone’s listening, someone who isn’t just going to try and one-up you. Mostly it serves to remind me of where I’ve been, and who I’ve been. It gives me hope, I suppose – that I can look back on the past and say, “Well, I may be such a sorry sack of shit that even the military wouldn’t want me*, but at least I’m not as bad off as I was then!”

Then again, I don’t remember being such a sorry sack of shit when I was 21 and 22. In fact, those were pretty good times, and I can’t access the stuff I wrote then. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.

At any rate, to wade back through the muck and onto my original topic, I remember saying something rather intelligent (for me) last time I took Vicodin: “Everyone who cares about me is 1000 miles away.” (On the off-chance Jeramy is reading this, can it with the Justin Timberlake references, okay?) I do this, I suppose, because I want to feel like someone cares, even if I know that someone is only me. And I am in the center of a 1000 mile diameter of indifference.

---

I’m a little miffed.

The movie I want to see is not playing in Van Buren. And I never really want to go to movies, but I decided I need to get out more, even if only by myself. Plus, I’ve heard Juno is really good, and I’ve been waiting a while for it to go into wide release.

I could go to Fayetteville. But if I drive that far, I will smoke. And if I smoke, I will hate myself. I have avoided smoking for many, many hours, and I’m sort of perversely proud of myself for that.

I have about an hour to decide. I have absolutely no willpower. And I’ve convinced myself that I don’t deserve to be successful at anything. Plus, I don’t have this irrational hatred for northwestern Arkansas and in fact even miss it a little, although I imagine it’s in much the same manner as heretics envy the wrathful.

(The fact that I have to be at work at 6:30 in the morning is completely irrelevant because I am going to look like shit and feel like shit no matter how much or how little I sleep.)

---

I was out at Chaffee today, and I saw a group of Patriot Guard riders. Made me wonder if the WBC is in the area. Like I don’t have enough fucksticks and douchebags in my life.

Music: Whiskeytown – To Be Evil (I’ve had e-fucking-nough of the blatant steeldrum abuse in that asinine “Soulja Boy” song, and I wanted to hear one being treated well by someone with talent)

* not that I’ve actually tried to join, but I’ve considered it with varying degrees of seriousness ever since I decided to move out here – joining the medical corps and using the money to go back to school. I was talking about this with Anna, and she basically told me I was too fat, and that at 5′11, I’d be expected to be around 160.

Annie is gone and the house is finally quiet.

I’m not, generally speaking, a huge fan of the teenager. Exceptions can and have been made on a case-by-case basis, but generally I find them to be a subset of the human race comprised entirely of douchebags.

I’ve never wrecked a car. I’ve dinged my own car a few times but I do not understand the mentality it requires to drive a new car at high speeds paying absolutely no attention to your surroundings, including the car stopped at the light in front of you.

So this douchebag from Van Buren smashed the hell out of Cindi’s truck, debilitating her for a while, and Jeramy and I kept the dog while she got back on her feet. I’ve always wanted a dog, so you’d think this would be kind of a miniature thrill for me.

Unfortunately, Annie is a chihuahua, either purely or so close as to not matter much. And chihuahuas are small dogs, and small dogs are annoying. They’re very needy, and I do not do well with being needed that much. And pets don’t need you nearly as much as children do, which is reason #92,492 that it’s fortunate God has blessed me with an inhospitable set of woman-parts.

I wanted to be a dog person, though. Aside from the fact that dudes dig chicks who dig dogs, what’s the alternative? Being a cat person? Not only does that tell people that you’re self-centered and callous enough to only want a pet that can largely take care of itself, but you never hear of an eighty-year-old woman dying in her trailer surrounded by fifty Boxers. (Which would kind of kick ass, now that I think of it.)

That cat*, though, never woke me up at 6 in the morning because it had to pee. It’s woken me up at ungodly hours because it wanted to play, but that’s a problem that can be solved by tossing it into a pile of dirty laundry (a trick you definitely don’t want to try with an animal that’s gotta go).

Conclusion and moral: I’m so fucking selfish.

---

I’ve always been one to take my knocks when they’re deserved. I have no trouble admitting that I’ve done something incredibly stupid, and when I can learn from the situation, all the better. So when I forgot about tipping points and gravity at work this evening (a Haemonetics machine is not a good object with which to relearn such a lesson), I laughed at myself for being a dumb bitch and promised to learn from the mistake, which is something I have about a 95% success rate with.

My face hurts, and I can deal with that. My pride hurts, too, because when Cindi and Anita came over to get the dog, and I told them what happened to my nose, they said, “You’ve got a black eye, too.” I checked it after they left, and they were referring to my ever-present, ever-lovely undereye Louis Vuittons.

I guess my pride is okay, since I’m not all that fond of my naturally-haggard visage anyway.

Speaking of work; I wonder if any of the other Caucasoids feel a minor guilty pang when they ask someone of Native American heritage if they’ve had a smallpox vaccination recently?

---

I am not quitting smoking. If I put it that way I will fail, although that’s probably exactly what it looks like to the layperson. I slept extremely poorly last night, and I’m assuming it was a withdrawal thing. The Benadryl, it does nothing.

I’m just practicing what I preach: avoid smoking or hot beverages for an hour. I’m trying to avoid smoking for an hour. Each day is only a series of hours, right?

(Rationalization and trying to use reverse psychology on yourself are opposite sides of the same warped coin, I believe. And it’s a lot of fun watching it spin.)

Speaking of work again, now I know why we tell people not to smoke for an hour. (I should have anyway, but I could fill a large volume of pages with the shit I’ve forgotten from nursing school… actually, I guess I couldn’t, could I?)

I assumed it was an anticoagulation thing, because I am a moron. In actuality, it’s that when you smoke, you inhale CO, which binds to your hgb and keeps O2 from boarding the RBC streetcar. (Same reason people die of CO poisoning, either accidentally or on purpose: even though they’re breathing, the O2’s coming right back out the way it came in, because the CO is taking up all the space on the hgb.)

So you’re RBC-depleted anyway, lowering your O2-carrying capacity. Then you do something that’s going to muscle O2 to the side. Too little O2 and down you go. And not in a good way.

I guess the hour is just kind of a cushion to let your body acclimate to its decreased blood volume. I’m still not 100% sure about the hot beverages thing; the closest I can guess is the potential for vasodilation, which, combined with a decreased blood volume, could make your BP drop appreciably. But by the time anything you drink makes it to your bloodstream, it’s pretty well filtered and temperature-regulated.

My efforts to coax the answer out of Google led me to this. It’s an interesting perspective, I think. (By which I mean, “that really is neat, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to sit over there now.”)

I guess I could ask, but I feel stupid enough, thank-you. I could just make something up, like “If you have a cup of coffee after you donate blood, Jesus will cast your soul into Purgatory for all time, where you’ll listen to the weeping of unBaptized babies until the Judgment trump sounds.”

---

Speaking of Indians again, I had this thought while riding by the massive Choctaw casino earlier. I wonder why people who gamble don’t just donate money to the Indians themselves, or to any other of the sixteen thousand charities there are out there. I guess because when you blow your money on slots or cards or dice, there’s that minute chance of winning, which gives you a rush, which is why you keep doing it even though you’re statistically likely to leave with less money than you had coming in.

It’s actually quite similar to people who donate large sums to certain causes then put out press releases about it. The rush of altruism.

Music: Ben Folds – Landed (that it was used in a Hilton commercial makes me want to break things)

* her name’s Ellie, by the way

I am not quitting smoking. I am trying to avoid smoking. Just like I tell donors when I wrap their arms, because I know they’re just gonna do it anyway, and I don’t want to sound like a scolding schoolmarm.

Needless to say, I feel fantastic about the whole venture. I think a small but vital part* of the entire process is that “smoker” becomes your identity as much as “inhaling lungfuls of carcinogen-laden goodness”** becomes your habit. And, barring an apocalyptic event in which everyone you know dies, it’s damn hard to change who you are.

Especially without any sort of chemical or moral assistance. This is going to be fun.

In other news, I have been living most of my life convinced that my mother completely made up the pronunciation of my name out of whole cloth. I’ve had a complex about this for years, especially since grade 10, when I took mythology and even the teacher didn’t say my name right. (Right to me, anyway.) The first time I ever heard of “going by” something other than the name you were given was in grade 3, right after we moved Southward, and by then it was too late to think of myself as “DJ”.

And then I read about 61 Danaë, which is an asteroid discovered 122 years before I was born. And sometimes pronounced /dəˈneɪə/ də-nay’-ə. Meaning one less thing that might prove Mom’s crazy, and that… there might be others….

Music: Ryan Adams – Tractor Beam

* another small and vital part: the pituitary gland, otherwise we’d be a race of midgets, which would, admittedly, be sort of cool

** saying that tongue-in-cheekily, not out of self-righteous ex-smokerness. I hate those people.

Sometimes I swear, my brain is being colonized by insane fleas.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night. I’m pretty sure it was just a matter of being too warm, which is because the thermostat in this house fucking blows. So I parked myself on the couch and had myself a dream that I was making out with John Krasinski, aka Jim from The (American) Office. It then segued into a dream where he was working in my office. I parked the bus and set the jacks (which is pretty comical in itself), and he was gone, and I was awake.

I portend that humans fall in love more at night because we seem more interesting, when in actuality, we’re under the spell of some sort of lightlessness-induced insanity. “We talked all night.” Probably 98 per cent gibberish, plus you were probably drunk, so you weren’t anywhere near as interesting as you thought originally, but it happens quite a lot, and I guess I’m no exception, because I woke up from that second dream in the dark, heartbroken and yearning. For a guy who’s a fictional character on a television show I rarely watch.

Granted, having done a little homework, I would have to say that he seems like a reasonably intelligent fellow, and it would be nice having a person around who knew that the word “verboten” had nothing to do with watersports.

The point is, I want to kiss someone like that again. Out of a great and burning desire, rather than a feeling of obligation. Out of mutual attraction, and with tongues.

Daylight restored my sanity, by the way. He’s cute, but Jesus Christ, I’m not fourteen anymore. I don’t do celebrity crushes now.

Eighteen years ago today, I can recall exactly where I was and what I was doing.

In 1990, I lived in Hull. I was going to turn eight years old. And I spent the first day of the new year painting sweatshirts with fabric paint along with the rest of my family.

This year, I slept until noon and woke up in pain that, unlike many of the ills suffered by Americans on this day, was in no way self-inflicted. I did the dishes, cracked open a book, and fell into a warm and blessedly dreamless sleep for an hour. I got up, showered, and here I am, thinking of years past and the year to come.

2008 is an election year. (As if any of us could forget it.)

It will be a Leap Year.

The Olympics (well, the summer ones, the only ones that count to most people) will be held.

I wonder what the year will hold. Maybe I will be published. Maybe I will die. Both have an equal probability of happening.

Maybe I will move upwards in my job. Maybe I will move westward, to Bakersfield. Or back to Greenville.*

Maybe I will visit Hull. Maybe I will go to our old condominium, stand there with my simple-minded husband at my side and my sandals in my hands, and throw rocks; and there just won’t be enough. Wait, that’s not my life, that’s Forrest Gump.

Maybe God will make me a bird, and I’ll fly far, far away. Maybe God will send His Son back as prophecied. And while we’re telling fairytales, maybe His (Their?) most devout believers will stop treating this planet like the Sex Pistols treated most of their hotel rooms. Or, at the very least, maybe they will end the hatred, judgment, hypocrisy, and obnoxiousness that they’re known for (and that has me half-convinced that they want to become martyrs in the most literal sense).

Maybe Prohibition Redux will come to an end. Again, I know I’m dreaming, and it would have very little effect on me personally. It is nice, though, to daydream about our government doing something sensical for once.

Music: Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – Dear John (the Follow the Lights version; I prefer Jacksonville’s)

*update: when I went to their blood drives page, I saw that this year they’d be holding a memorial drive for Trooper Eric F. Nicholson. The eighth annual.

I know, I know, time flies, but Jesus. My first letter published in the Greenville News was about Trooper Nicholson’s shooting.